I normally don’t wear much makeup, but for this special date I poured on powder and foundation, immaculately layered for that polished porcelain look, a la Ivanka Trump. The multiple coats of mascara, the blush accentuating my cheekbones, the lipliner delicately enlarging my mouth into a sensuous pout…were all set, as in concrete, with a final flourish of the big, fluffy brush bathed in powder.

I was told he “liked his women that way” — idealized, photoshopped, as if on a fashion magazine cover or worshipped on a pedestal (all the better to be knocked down!) As for what he looked like, from his pictures, you could tell he was considerably older than I, his body a little paunchy, his face ruddy and puffy probably from both working and drinking too much. But you could also tell he had once been handsome; now by all accounts, he was rich and smart but also “complicated.”

As with all blind dates — not to mention Forrest Gump’s “box of chocolates” — you never know exactly what you’re going to get. The same could be said for whom you elect as President! — but that’s getting ahead of this story.

I won’t bother to tell you what I wore, for it makes me sad to be reminded: one of most expensive, seductive outfits now tattered and in shreds.

Did I mind that he had been married and divorced three times? No. Was I bothered that he talked about himself the whole time over dinner? Not really, because the Pinot Noir (two bottles!) we shared was reputedly among the world’s best. What did upset me were his political views and how he compared himself to Lenin, Thomas Cromwell (Henry VIII’s hatchet man), and Mikhail Bakunin (the 19th century Russian anarchist and nationalist whose writings serve as violent templates for anti-globalists today). My date’s eyes lit up, awakening his sleepy demeanor, when he quoted Bakunin’s belief in:

“The passion for destruction as a creative force.”

Yes, by now you’ve guessed, my blind date was Steven Bannon. And I don’t mean to suggest that what he did to me is the equivalent to what he’s now doing, as Trump’s brain, with the State Department, EPA, etc., not to mention U.S. treaty obligations. But I will say this:

When I saw him recently on television (the only time I’ve seen him since that blind date), he declared that his mission was “to deconstruct the administrative state,” and I couldn’t help but be reminded of his words that night:

I’m going to destroy you! You need it. Admit it.

“Destroy,” according to Urban Dictionary, means to have very hard sex, or go to town on a woman usually in derogatory fashion with the bloke deriving most of the sexual pleasure and often wishing to inflict some element of short term pain, hoping the woman will bleed or walk ‘bow-legged’ for several days afterwards…. It can also mean that the sex is so good for the woman that her independence is destroyed, her submission complete.

Was this was a yummy dream or hellish nightmare? Forget about me. Think, instead, about what Steven Bannon means for the future of United States!